


Gift Of The Magi

by GoodFae



Category: Strange Magic (2015)
Genre: Arranged Marriage, Strange Magic week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-16
Updated: 2016-08-16
Packaged: 2018-08-09 03:32:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7785079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoodFae/pseuds/GoodFae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My addition to Strange Magic Week-Day 2</p>
<p>The title is in reference to a short work by O. Henry of the same name. In order to give her husband a gift, a young wife cuts off and sells her hair, buying her husband a chain for his pocket watch. In order to give his wife a gift, the young man sells his pocket watch to buy her a comb for her hair. This is my take on the Butterfly Bog version of the story</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gift Of The Magi

**Author's Note:**

> Short and a bit messy! But it was fun to get out :) Happy Strange Magic Week!!

Marianne sat down on the edge of the bed. Although filled with little more than willow bark and dandelion roots, the woven basket in her lap was ominously heavy.

                Fertility treatments.  Six months of marriage and the council was concerned about the Queen’s empty womb.  But it was, after all, the purpose of her marriage. To sire a child with the Bog King and unite the kingdoms in a way that a peace treaty alone couldn’t. 

                Six months.  It didn’t seem so long since that cold fall night her father brought her to this castle.  She was dumped on the doorstep, wed on the doorstep and left on the doorstep as he and the rest of the fairy population began their great migration south for the coming winter.  They left Marianne without her sword and with a husband she’d never met—only heard not two weeks earlier when the sound of his angry yelling drifted out of the council’s closed doors.

                He deserted her on the doorstep too, disappearing into the dark forest that was beginning to brittle with the bits of cold pushing through the air.

                “He’ll come around to this union soon enough,” promised the small but loud woman she soon learned was her mother in law.

                But he hadn’t.

                Six months and though they never spoke of it, their marriage wasn’t real.  She was still untouched.

                Still unwanted.

                Still not enough for the tall, exasperating and endearing King she’d married. 

                She thumbed a piece of willow bark, the dry smell of it already making her throat wish for a well of water to wash it down with.  At least in all this, despite her own heart’s desperate longing, she and her King had become friends.

                It was bittersweet, such as it was.  But it was her world.  He didn’t confine her to the narrow possibilities a fairy queen was traditionally allowed.  And he never mocked her for her interests in things that weren’t queen-like.  He—he seemed to enjoy that in her.  And she knew he loved sparring with her.  She never felt so close to him as she did during those hours they spent parrying sword and staff. 

               They were good together. 

               And they dined together nearly every meal, spent more evenings together than not, sometimes talking late into the night, other times reading in companionable silence.  But he always left her here in what had once been his own bedroom quarters, but were now hers. She’d had six months of lying in this bed, staring at all of his belongs that filled the space, wondering what she had to do for him to accept her as his wife.  She still didn’t have any answers.

              And she still didn’t know where he slept.  Or with who.

              But she did know that she could make the King laugh. She remembered the first time she’d surprised the deep sound out of him, his face stretched with a smile that made him appear years younger.  He had seemed, for a moment, open to her.  Ready for her.  She wished she’d been brave enough to kiss him then. But the moment had passed and although sometimes, she thought she felt him watching her, she was beginning to believe that was just a product of her heightened loneliness.

                She was so close to the kind of love she’d given up on, so close to the kind of partnership and marriage that she hadn’t believed possible—but there was no spanning the gorge that kept her locked out.  Her king did not want her.

                He enjoyed his fairy queen, but he did not return her desire.  He did not return her love.  No matter how careful and thorough she’d been in pursuing him, even going so far to avoid the often sugar-laced methods of fairy courtship as to not nauseate the Goblin King—he always remained just a little out of reach. 

                And now, the council feared that if she remained without child much longer, her husband would grow annoyed with her.  Perhaps renege on the peace treaty. Without their child, there was no security in the future of this merging of kingdoms. 

                She could do nothing. Except eat her bark.  And wait for the council to make their next move to keeping the Bog King happy. 

                Her stomach soured at that thought, hot tears pressed behind her eyes. 

                She took her first bite of bark, her mouth puckering at the way it seemed to absorb every ounce of moisture on her tongue—leaving her grasping for the small cup of water the chamber-attendants left on the nightstand. 

                She grimaced fiercely. One bite down, an entire basket to go. 

                “There ye are.” The door shut behind her husband, his frown stuck on a piece of parchment in his hand.  The other rubbed at the back of his neck.  “If I have to listen to Stuff and Thang argue one more time about that blasted festival the elves are throwing to welcome the fairies back from migration—I’m going tie them up for the birds to have.”

                “Stuff and Thang? Or the fairies.”

                “Hah.” He tossed the parchment aside on the small desk he kept in the room.  It was littered with many other like it and Marianne often wondered how he found anything at all.  “What’s that ye got there?”

                She drug her finger through the contents, unable to meet his eyes.  “It’s from the fairy council.”

                He moved closer, one nail catching the edge of the woven side, tipping it down until he could peer inside.  “Bark? Roots? Is this some sort of gift from the Southern colonies?”

                “No. They’re fertility treatments,” she replied quietly, unable to so much as even look at the long fingered hands she’d coveted for so long. 

                After a moment of silence, his voice growled through the bed chamber, reminding Marianne of those early days when she’d been so afraid of him. “What?”

                “The council’s worried that an heir hasn’t been—”she swallowed hard. “Conceived.”

                “Is that why they called you away this morning, then?”

                She nodded. “The willow bark and dandelion root are very non-invasive. They won’t harm me.  It’s safe for me to take them…regardless of—of—of any other circumstances that would lead to me remaining barren.” 

                His teeth ground together, but when he next spoke, his voice was very obviously restrained. “I don’t want to talk about this right now. Come spar with me, Marianne.”

                “I can’t. The council suggested that I not be quite so active in an effort to promote a pregnancy.”

                “You’re the Queen. You can do anything you damn well please.”  His deep voice ripped the air with the force of his anger.

                “Bog.” She clutched at the basket, her knuckles turning white. “If I don’t take this seriously? If the council and the fairy kingdom thinks that I’m not actively trying to fulfill my role in this marriage, I can be tried for treason.”

                “Treason!”

                “If they thought you were unhappy with me, and that trying me to prove their willingness to see this peace treaty through would prevent you from unleashing war, then yes.”

                “Then I’ll bloody tell them I’ll have their heads if they dare disrespect ye in such a way! You are the Queen!” His tall form paced in front of her and his wings twitched with fury.

                “Yes, Bog.  I’m the queen.  Just the queen. Fairies don’t value the female beyond begetting heirs. I am not worthy of their respect if I am unable to provide my kingdom with the security of a child.  Which—which is why, when its clear the fertility treatments aren’t working and I’m cast as sterile, I’ll be sent from you for a time. And they’ll offer you a brood fairy of your choosing.” Humiliation and helpless anger closed her throat. 

                “Your bloody fucking kingdom will offer me a mistress?”

                Chills crept up her spine and she dared a glance at his face. She’d seen him express many different emotions in the past, but she’d never seen this feral savagery pushing at the edge of his features.

“No. Not yours to keep. Yours to use until she bears a child that we’ll raise together.”

                His silence seethed.

“It’s perfectly okay.” Her heart grew a dark black spot at that lie. “Dawn’s real mother was a brood-fairy. The mother doesn’t matter so long as the baby has the king’s blood.” 

                He turned to the window, blocking the late afternoon sun’s light. “No one will send you from my castle, Marianne, I don’t care how fairies do it.  Fairies be damned!  Yer not leaving me and I’m not takin’ no mistress.”

                “You’d hardly be the first king to do so, Bog.  I really can’t expect you to live the rest of your life without…a bedmate.”

                “I have a bed mate.” He replied tersely.

                She very nearly whimpered because he couldn’t mean her.  She was a chain around his neck, not the female he shared his body with.

                “Well, your goblin lover aside, you’ll still need to mate with a fairy.  The conditions of the peace treaty demand it.”

                “Goblin lover?” He twisted back around. “What are ye on about?”

                “Bog, you haven’t spent one night here. Or with me.” Damn it, she wasn’t going to cry. “You don’t have to lie about her. It’s okay if you take a lover, you don’t owe me anything.  I’m content.  With this life. You’re a good king.  And a good friend. And I want you to be happy.”

                “You want me to be happy.”

                “Yes.”

                “And you think that means another woman?”

                “Well, it’s certainly not with me.” She winced at the stupid, hot bitterness she couldn’t quite hold back. Unshed tears made her cheeks ache.  With nothing else to do, she lifted another piece of willow.

“Don’t take that,” he ground out.

“They’ll know if I’m not.  It tends to turn fairy skin pale green.  If I’m not green in a week, they’ll suspect something.” She shoved it in her mouth, not letting her body reject it this time.

Bog’s shadow covered her and before she could so much as blink, he reached down and slapped the basket out of her lap, its contents flying across the room.

                “Bog!”

                He squatted down between her legs, his knees angled out, wings flared behind him.  Marianne tried to glare with all the cool of a queen, but found herself sputtering in anger, snarling at him.

                “You have no right, no right at all to deny me a real marriage and then keep me from honor. I’d rather the entire kingdom believe me barren then know that I’ve been refused by my own husband.”

                “Deny you a real marriage? Refused?”

                “You won’t touch me!”

                “You won’t bloody sing for me, Marianne. Of course I won’t touch ye.” 

                “Sing….” She frowned, confusion tempering her fire. “You want me to sing to you?”

                “My mother said ye’d be…willing fer me if you sang to me. She said that’s how fairies communicate their desire for a partner. I want—I want ye to enjoy our joining, Marianne. I didnae want ye to think I was just some brute goblin by taking ye before ye were ready. And I cannae be sure of that until ye sing for me.”

                Marianne rubbed at the aching pain in her throat.  “You’re right. We do sing.  Unless we’re trying to prove to our goblin husbands that we’re more than just flighty fairies.  I—I didn’t want to frighten you off. I wanted to make you happy.”

                His mouth pinched hard, the shape of his face narrow and harsh.  “Ye weren’t singing because you wanted me to mate with you.”

                She nodded.  “And you haven’t lain with me because you were waiting for me to sing.”

                He nodded.

                Marianne snorted, covering her face with her hands—catching both the tears and the joy.

                Her husband’s arms slowly closed around her for the first time and she leaned into him, pushed into him, burrowed into his neck and shoulder clasped him to her.

                One of his hands covered the back of her head, cupping her to him, keeping her where he could bend his head against hers.  His entire body shook with every breath of air he sucked in.

                “Marianne.” He whispered her name and she rubbed her cheek back and forth in utter adoration against the pale shape of his neck until he eased her back.  His fingers caught under either side of her jaw, the whisper of his long claws against her skin made her clutch at his wrists and bite back a soft moan.

But he heard something of it as his blue eyes went soft and needy.  “I love you.”

She nodded in his grip, sliding her hands from his wrists to his shoulders, shuddering as he gently moved her further back into her bed.  Into their bed. 

“D-d-do you want me to sing?” She asked, her breasts aching as her King settled his form against her, the hard armor of his chest scratching at her through the softness of her petal gown. 

                He scraped a kiss across her jaw, another over her neck.  “I do.” His teeth closed over the soft edge of her ear and she whined, head tilted to the side, offering him as much of her ear and neck as he chose to take.  “But I’d prefer that ye let me orchestrate this song, my sweet queen. Ye make such lovely sounds.”

                He pressed her into the bed and Marianne clutched at him helplessly, her fingers digging into the space between his wings.  And when they rattled and he arched against her, a tortured noise breaking past his lips, she set about making her King sing as well, turning the long empty solos of their lives into one perfect duet. 

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally planned as multi-chapter fic. In its condensed form, it's a bit darker. But, in the original premise that still holds true for this drabble, Marianne and Bog set out to revolutionize the new kingdom they are creating--throwing out the old damaging ways of both fairy and goblin to create a new standard.


End file.
